Worstward Ho
by Samuel Beckett
Paragraph 1
On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on. Till nohow on. Said nohow on.
Commentary:
The book starts in medias res; we can assume that the narrator has been speaking for a while, the first thing we read being an exhortation to go on. It is unclear whether the exhortation comes from the narrator to himself (“I’ll say on”, as in Greenlaw’s paraphrasis) or to some interlocutor. Indeed, “say on” is grammatically correct only when read as an imperative, but this is not terribly important: throughout Worstward Ho grammaticality will be abused whenever necessary.
The fact that right after this sentence he moves on to the passive voice (“be said on”) is maybe evidence that the narrator himself is worried about this ambiguity. Maybe he is suggesting something like this: it is unclear whether it is me or you who must say more but, in any event, more must be said.
This is already a first example of, so to say, necessary ungrammaticality. I dare say -although a native English speaker would come in handy here- that “say on” has a grammatically correct reading, analogous to “go on”, meaning “keep on saying”. I propose, thus, that this first ungrammaticality has been generated in the following way:
1st step: On. There must be more of something.
2nd step: Say on. It is saying the something there must be more of. This is already dubiously grammatical, but it is, at least, a natural saturation of the adverb “on”: something must “on”, well, it is “say” that must “on”.
3rd step: But who has to say more? Me, you? The narrator won’t commit himself to any of these options, so he transforms “say” in “be said”. He does that, nevertheless, without paying attention to the role that “say” was playing in relation with “on”. Stricto sensu, “be said” cannot fulfill this grammatical role; but there is no grammatical way -at least no way that doesn’t involve a long circumlocution- to say what the narrator wishes to say. So, unashamedly,
4th step: Be said on.
Proof of how difficult would be to say this in a economical yet grammatical way is Greenlaw’s paraphrasis:
Say on is paraphrased by Greenlaw as I’ll say on.
Be said on is paraphrased as Let “on” be said.
What in the first paraphrase was an adverb modifying the verb “say” (I’ll say on), turns, in the second one, into that what is said (Let “on” be said). But this can’t be right. It is not that the narrator exhorts (someone else, himself) to utter the word “on”; he exhorts to say on (on to be said). And if he has to violate syntax in order to do so, so be it.
The narrator, thus, advocates for speaking on, whatever way -”somehow on”- until there is no way to keep on speaking: “till nohow on”.
This is the first example of a monstruous construction (so to call it): “somehow” is perfect English and comes, obviously, from “some how”. The narrator advocates for speaking on while there is a way to do it; that is, logically, until there is no way to do it. He must seek for hows, one, another how until there are no hows left. We will have some how until we have no how. Somehow happens exactly till nohow.
In logical terms, there is some how if and only if it is not true that there is no how. A slightly silly aside: we are inferring here ¬∀xAx from ∃xAx. This transition is unwarranted intuitionistically. We can, then, say that the narrator believes that the fact that there is some how (to say) or not is an objective fact.
Another aside: “nohow” still appears in the dictionary (I’m using the Concise Oxford Dictionary). Apparently, it is used informally, in American English, to reinforce a negative. Something like “no way!”. I believe that it is more natural to have it deriving from “somehow” through the process that I have just reconstructed than supposing that the narrators has independently chosen to use this americanism to speak about the necessity to go on. Even more when this is seen against the background of the processes of adverbial modification that are staged in ulterior paragraphs.
Now comes the second, beautiful example of ungrammaticality. We had “be said on” and now we read “somehow on”. This, in the way of understading syntax that, apparently, the narrator has (or so has the transition from “say on” to “be said on” made us think) must be understood as an ellipsis of “be said somehow on”. Therefore, “till nohow on” is an ellipsis of “be said till nohow on” and, indeed, another way to say this is “said nohow on”, which happens to be the last sentence in the paragraph. How simple. How cool.
It could be said (but this a very tentative hypothesis that must be validated as we go on), that the narrator ignores to a certain extent the grammatical functions of the expressions he uses and accepts, instead, the following principle:
(Substitution Principle): If two expressions A and B are intersubstitutable, two expressions F(A) and F(B) that only differ in that every token of A in the former is substituted by a token of B in the later are equally intersubstitutable
In this paragraph we have seen two examples of this:
1.From “say on” to “be said on”. Substitution of “say” by “be said”.
2.From “somehow on” to “till nohow on”. Substitution of “somehow” by “till nohow”.
This is more or less it. I don’t foresee that all paragraphs will need an equally long commentary, but this had to, being the first. I summarise now the hypotheses that we have started to advance and which should be corroborated in subsequent commentaries:
1.The narrator obeys what I have dubbed the Substitution Principle [SP].
2.Adverbial monstruosity is, also, an example of the use of SP at word-scale
And a list of things to which it’s maybe worth to have a quick reference:
Substitutions:
Say by Be said.
Somehow by Till nohow.
Monstruous Constructions:
Nohow (comes from somehow)
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